Death Valley 6-10-11

A few weekends ago a group of us from work took an overnight camping trip into Death Valley. We left Friday morning and returned Saturday night. We left Ridgecrest and headed north to Olancha. From there we hit dirt roads and would not see much pavement again for the next 200 miles.

 

 As we started north into the park we began to climb in elevation.  We were driving through the pine trees and the temperature was a pleasant 65 degrees.  Sadly, this was not going to last and we would soon drop into the valleys where the predicted high was near 100.

 

Our first real stop, besides a quick lunch break during the descent, was at Tea Kettle Junction.  As you can see people bring tea kettles from all over and leave them, usually with a message, at the junction's sign.  Next stop: the Race Track. 

The Race Track (I also suggest viewing the night time panoramic shot on the Wiki page in full size) is famous for its mysterious moving rocks that leave paths across the dry lake bed.

Some of the paths were quite interesting, making zig-zag marks, for others it appeared as though the rocks had split into multiple pieces during their travels.

Our next stop from here was the Ubehebe Crater, it was getting later in the day when we got there and the wind was fairly strong so we decided against the hike around the crater. 

Although the pictures don't really show it the crater is half a mile wide and 500 to 777 feet deep.

As I said the wind was quite strong and the updraft out of the crater was amazing.

From the crater we headed to our camping spot at the Eureka Dunes.  There was still a fair bit of wind when we got there but it calmed as the sun went down.  We made a dinner of fajitas with a dutch oven peach cobbler for desert.

The next morning we got up and went and played on the dunes, I quickly overdid it climbing one quickly and made myself feel sick for a bit.  We went back down to camp and had a breakfast of bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast burritos with pancakes.

We broke camp and one truck took off for the highway route back home while the other two of us circled to the other side of the dunes to take another off-road trail back.  Our progress was quickly haulted when we got to a (the) rough section of the trail.  It looked bad enough that the trucks probably would have come out with body damage so we turned back.

We headed out where the other truck had gone towards Big Pine.

We stopped and ate at a local place when we got to Big Pine.  Then we proceeded down Highway 14 back to Ridgecrest.  A total trip of about 320 miles, with well over half being off-road and no problems, not bad for  a truck with ~150,000 miles.

More Pictures Here!  Password is dv2011